Image Preprocessing for OCR Text Alignment

The patent applies preliminary action by performing vertical alignment of text rows before the OCR recognition process. The system calculates the vertical position of each text row and adjusts their positions to ensure uniform alignment along the vertical axis. This preprocessing step ensures that when the raster scanner subsequently processes the image, all text in a row is properly aligned, eliminating the errors that would otherwise occur with non-vertically aligned text.

The patent extracts the vertical alignment function from the core OCR recognition process and implements it as a separate preprocessing step. Instead of modifying the complex OCR engine to handle non-aligned text, the system isolates the alignment problem and solves it independently before feeding the aligned image to the existing OCR software. This maintains the simplicity of the OCR core while adding the necessary capability to handle non-vertically aligned text.

The system performs vertical alignment as a preliminary action before raster scanning, ensuring that all text rows are properly positioned. This allows the raster scanner to maintain its high processing speed while accurately capturing text at consistent heights, eliminating mis-reads, double-reads, and missing text issues that would otherwise occur.